Archie's transistor radio was tuned to a weak signal; tuned to the surreal humour of Radio Free Europe's zaniest ever DJ, Morrie Cole. Alistair listened but just didn't get it, unlike Archie, who would emit gravelly guffaws and shake his head in amusement at another innuendo ridden, ribald gag ridiculing the state of New Britain.

"That's brilliant," Archie muttered but Alistair had his mind on other things. He conspired to retrieve the tin box and undertake to crack the code. Sifting through a number of tubs of tech 'n' mech, he sorted the components whilst Archie fiddled with a line of identical units, re-wiring the transmitters. Trade in his illegal comms had been steady and the extra money supplemented the sustenance provided by the greenhouse and paid for luxuries like soap, matches, boot polish, brown sugar and the occasional bottle of proper Scotch whiskey.

Smoke curled from Archie's lips and he squinted. Splicing together wires, at the same time, he sermonised Alistair with his weekly lecture about the great people of history. Archie's particular liking was for those who had made a difference via passive resistance; or those with a true moral compass.

"Slavery, oppression, discrimination...men and women have sacrificed through the ages to topple tyrants and help others live good lives," Archie said. "The great American President Randall Heffernan Jr. orated at his End of Office speech that 'every person should look in their heart and do what is right to preserve freedom, liberty and justice for all and to protect the vulnerable'. He pitied those who subjugated or took advantage of others only to enrich their own lives whilst diminishing others."

"Heff was not without fault or frailties," Archie agreed, "But he did the right thing, often at great personal cost. That is something very much worth considering Alistair."

"Are you listening to me boy?" Archie asked and Alistair looked up and nodded, having heard this lecture every Saturday for as long as he could remember. Alistair could parrot each word but wanted more to ask his grandfather about the tin box but knew if he did, Archie would know he'd been snooping; Alistair remained mum.

"The Suffragettes pitted themselves against the patriarchal attitudes just to get women the vote," Archie sighed. "Chartists did the same for the common man. Plenty of brutal persecution and blood, sweat and tears were spilled on the path to win our undeniable right to self-determination and democracy. Then we let mongrels deliver a system of New-democracy where no one gets a say. And the greatest tragedy in having this all ripped away? No one seems to even care."

Alistair nodded, pretending to agree.

"Don't ever fool yourself. What we have now is the price you pay to look the other way."

"It's not like you can talk back," Alistair suggested.

There was silence; a very cold, empty silence. Archie tipped ash into a bowl and looked at his grandson, resigned to the fact a lecture on kicking against the prigs would do him more harm than good. He tried another tangent.

"What do I always say: If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything," Archie finalised.

Yeah right Alistair thought as he tossed another handful of bits in to a tub. If I told you the truth about everything I do, you and Delilah would grind me in to dust.

With dextrous fingers, Alistair fished out the good parts from the bad, and gave them a blast with an airgun to blow away grime. The bad parts would be tipped down the garbage chute later but for now he separated the rest in to a variety of plastic tubs.

Meanwhile, Archie continued telling the same old stories about New London of his youth. Again he reminded Alistair they didn't have Hydra Engines or HyperBoards or VisiScreens or Skyboards when he was a child and that the Overground was only brand spanking new when he'd been a lad.

"Tell me how you used to get bags of sweets for a tenner," Alistair mocked and Archie knew he was being teased.

"Comedian, eh? You cheeky rascal," Archie answered as he leaned over and checked the frequency jammer so their conversation was not being overheard by the Futurists. When it was close to pack up time, Archie always spoke of how the State was a hard, intolerant, fascist mob. Alistair only had to think of David Cooper to agree and Archie didn't mince words when it came to the State's inability to lend a helping hand and instead lash out with a brutal fist. The Futurists vulgar display of power made Archie's blood curdle.

Stubbing out his smoke, Archie looked down from his chair.

"I'll free you of your indentured servitude," he said, and Alistair rose to race off and Archie halted his advance. "First of all, I need 10 zippers, transmute cones and about three feet of single line, fringing wire and then you can go."

Begrudgingly, Alistair began to fill the order and when he was done, bolted straight to his workbench where he tore his HyperBoard off the juicer and flicked on the warming switch. Running back down to the flat, he grabbed his beanie and a scarf and then raring to go, Archie barked orders.

"Stay away from the Quad," Archie warned with a crooked finger. "I mean it."

"You've got one hour until lunch," Delilah called from the kitchen.

"Yes Pop," Alistair confirmed, adding, "I'm not hungry Delilah."

"I've got toad in the hole," she tempted.  Alistair ran out the door.

**********************

Down in the park, the Quad was shrouded in a soupy gloom and as always, a defiant group of old men huddled silently around a rusted barrel warming their hands over a fire as they tried to protect the flame from the rain with a makeshift cover. Grim and downtrodden, these veterans often wondered what they had fought for, each man gently jibing the others as the downpour fell miserably across the city.

Today, the veterans were quiet but one with sallow eyes acknowledged the boy with an uncomfortable nod of his head. Alistair could see the man's black eyes and battered nose and cracked lips and the dried blood splatter on his jacket. Stoically, these men took the Guards' beatings in their stride, having been made of sterner stuff, but Alistair still felt sympathy having also taken his schoolyard lickings.

"Lovely day out," the man croaked before he sniffed the stinky air again. "The tide's out but the city is going to be soggy with all this rain. I'd stay away from your tunnels today Alistair," he advised.

The other men huddled around a digital radio listening to Match of the Day. Twirling on his board, Alistair jammed his foot down, picked up speed and began to idle through the tenements. In glum light he practiced a trick involving a shifty pivot and 720 degree pirouette. The result was lacklustre; a tragic lack of power thwarted his chances of pulling it off and he skittled across the pathways a number of times as Balderick flew around him crowing with laughter. With wet hands and knees, he stood up, fixed his coat and flipping the board up with his heel, he had high hopes someday he'd pull the trick.

Urchins lurked in the shadows but timidly gave Alistair and Balderick free reign to fly around and around without any disturbance. Bored, he ignored the veteran's warning and headed for the tunnels. Skimming around sodden dumps he eased into the abandoned Underground station at old Queen's Park with the rain still coming down like cats and dogs. Peering through the entrance hall, he watched a steady stream of stormwater swish debris down into the tube way. Balderick landed on his shoulder as raindrops spitter-spattered and Alistair turned back and kicked along on his HyperBoard back to the Quads.

The light was murkier as the looming buildings reiterated the claustrophobic quality of the city. Cautiously, he avoided a group of urchins rummaging in the dumps, foraging for something to take the chill away; Alistair curled around each washed Quad and soon found he was on his own.

Alistair sniffed the air suspiciously and cautiously recalibrated the air particle counter in his goggles so that if the air became too gross he could skedaddle somewhere less fetid. Looping around, the square was desolate and he ollied himself up and along a concrete flowerbed, where there were no flowers, merely soil and dead weeds. He flipped off the bevelled edge, plonking down with a deft bend of his knees evading water pools.

Before easing out on to Central Common 11, a quad four times larger than his own, Alistair circled around the dilapidated swings and garden settings buckled with neglect and rusting in solitude. This Common would have once been filled with families and children, but as the veterans aged and the younger generations moved away, the life ebbed out of the precinct. A large Visi stood inactive, where it once provided an entertainment hub for the precinct it was now covered in scrawled graffiti tags and Hate-Crime messages. Flying past the Visi, he caught something in his peripheral vision, and he pirouetted and glided back to make a closer inspection.

It was as he had thought: once again, the stencil of three lions was daubed in red paint, with the words Ich bin ein Englander stencilled underneath. While the rain dripped off his fringe, he traced his finger over the words and Balderick bobbed over, cawing eerily. Alistair turned to shush his friend but was interrupted by a crackling voice.

"I beg God for salvation, for an angel every night," the voice said.

"Who is there?" Alistair called, squinting in the rain.

"Don't go opening old wounds," an old woman warned and Alistair moved away from the Visi; Alistair hadn't seen her sitting on the park bench opposite and he looked in her eyes but they did not flicker.

"Pardon?" Alistair asked again. "I'm not sure what you mean."

The old lady turned her ear to the sound of his voice, her form covered in a thick black plastic poncho. Smoke curled from her lips.

"Best be running along," she stated. "Nothing good comes from inquisitive minds."  

Alistair held his ground then slowly inched towards her as she sucked on her cigarette again.

"I'm not causing any trouble, honest," Alistair promised.

"You are glass," she chuckled. "And I see right through you. Don't worry, I have my eye set on you but it's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for, innit?" She dropped her cigarette butt at her feet; it momentarily sizzled as it absorbed water and Alistair realised the old lady was blind, and smelt of woodbines. She pointed in the direction of Balderick.

"I haven't heard a yard bird in London for a long, long time. The miserable buggers poisoned them all." The old lady sighed. "Barbarians at the gates and my own flesh and blood at that. That would be a raven, innit?"

"Yeah," Alistair replied as Balderick positioned himself on his friend's shoulder. "How did you know?"

"I know things because I remember," she replied. "There's a winter of discontent brewing lad. The jagged edges are fraying. You'll have to choose a side...choose wisely," the old lady warned.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alistair repeated.

"You will," she replied sagely. "Soon, you'll understand," she said adding cryptically, "You die, I die...then nothing changes. But soon everything will change. This wreckage of a city...it's coming to an end."

"I don't follow," Alistair began but the woman allowed herself a madcap laugh.

"Don't be coy. We're in a dark place. Beware of the darkness. As all things must pass, you best be prepared for the end."

"Prepared for what end?" Alistair called back but the old lady stretched.

"I've grown so tired," she yawned. "Waiting for better days."

Alistair didn't understand and Balderick circled between the boy and the lady and crowed another warning to his chum before flying off. Alistair stared intently at the soothsayer and she grinned at him with a toothless, inadvertently sinister smile. Her eyes were milky; burnt from a youth of staring at sunspots, looking for meaning.

"There's a little black spot on the sun today," she prattled, enigmatically, pointing to the Skyboards; Alistair shielded his face in the rain peering skywards. "It was the same old thing yesterday," she added, muttering indecipherably under her breath.

She shook her cupped hands, creating a rattle. Seven knuckle bone dice formed an unfathomable pattern in her palm. She clicked her tongue, exploring the meaning in her mind and rallying her wits. The dice didn't lie to her.

"It's darkest before the dawn," she warned. "And when the hurly-burly's gone... What's this?"

"Are you predicting my future?" Alistair asked curiously, leaning on his tippy toes. The old woman looked back at him, almost as if she was giving him the once over.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it," the old lady promoted. "There is no prophecy without heart and valour. Fear is the key determinant. Be sure to stand your ground, feel with your conscience and rule with your heart."

"I think you have the wrong boy," Alistair admitted; the old lady stared right at him.

"A lion will roar," she spoke. "And a redeemer will rise."

"You don't make much sense," Alistair said bluntly, shifting nearer to woman.

"Listening is free," the old lady warned. "I asked God if he can forgive me and he said 'it's all too dark'. Maybe you lad, you can be the one to make the change?"

Having got a little too close, the old lady clutched Alistair's wrist and held him vice-like.

"Change? Change what? You make it sound like I can make a difference," Alistair replied, struggling with the old lady and her eclecticism. "I can't make any changes."

"'You wouldn't believe the things I've seen and the things I've done in your name' I confessed."

Alistair began to get the creeps, badly, as he tried to wrestle free.

"Find your King of Pain," the old lady insisted, running her finger over his palm, then grew more curious. "What's this?"

"What's what?" Alistair asked.

"Forget what I said.  Find her. She will light your way. She will sacrifice everything for you. One will rise, one will redeem. Put your trust in her, for she is the light."

"I really think you've got the wrong person in mind," Alistair argued.

"Lead us from the dark," she implored quietly, earnestly, more directly, like it was an order and she leant forward, her milky eyes boring into his own.

"It can't rain all the time."

A clap of thunder brought an end to the fortune telling; the old lady released his wrist and with healthy helpings of curiosity and fear, hastily, Alistair hot-footed it after Balderick, hearing her screeching Ich bin eine Englander.  Left to her own devices, the old lady's nose twitched with a sixth sense. She rolled her tongue around in her mouth and returned the knucklebone dice to her sleeve, then casually tugged down the hood of her poncho.

"It would be nice to have a little something to smile about again," she wished. Once more baring her crooked, toothless smile as she sat idly in the tumbling rain, she whispered one final Ich bin eine Englander before falling silent.